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- "뜨거운 차가 차가운 차보다 싸요."
35 Comments
I wrote "the hot car is cheaper than the cold car". I thought, ok, surrealism, why not. Tea never crossed my mind.
Haha, that is one possible translation, since 차 (車) can be short for 자동차, but a Korean speaker would interpret it here as 'tea' (茶) given the 'hot/cold' adjectives.
I wrote, "the hot tea is cheaper than the cold tea," shouldn't that be accepted?
I absolutely agree it should, yes. Since Korean does not have any articles (definite or indefinite), then any article can be implied in the English translation.
The course is still new so these types of alternate translations have not all been added in yet, I believe. It's important to report them, especially for a language like Korean where sentences can be translated in many different ways.
It should not be wrong, as 차 is often used for a serving of tea. I would report it next time.
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This is one of those things that is likely to take forever to be accepted, because native English speakers will pretty consistently say that "a hot tea" sounds wrong (which it almost always does), and some will even be able to explain the rule for why it sounds wrong, which is that tea is an uncountable noun (cup is countable, so "a cup of tea" works), and the indefinite article cannot be used for uncountable nouns. And that's a pretty solid case against accepting it. However, almost anything will become countable as a menu item, at least in informal speech, so if you're comparing menu items, you could still make the case for accepting "a hot tea" with "a cold tea." (However, if you refer to "a hot tea" but just "cold tea" rather than "a cold tea" then it sounds like the cold tea is not a menu item--not that "a" is required for menu items, but it is weird to use it inconsistently for menu items--and so it sounds like you're making a comparison that doesn't make sense, between a hot tea from McDonalds and cold tea from the grocery store or something. So, if you only put "a" at the beginning but not before "cold tea" than I still wouldn't accept it.) Note: everything I said was as an American, and may not be the same in other dialects of English.
Let me give you another homonyms 1. 눈 eye vs. 눈 snow 2. 배 abdomen vs. 배 pear vs. 배 ship or boat 3. 밤 night vs. 밤 chestnut And so on. . .there are many homonyms in Korean! They can be differentiated by the context or a prolonged sound
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Some homonyms have long vowels like "eye" /눈/ versus "snow" /눈ː/.
Other homonyms do not like "abdomen"-"pear"-"ship".
However vowel length is no longer a functioning distinction in colloquial Korean, especially among younger generations.
There can be and often is a 더, but like many things in Korean, if clearly understood through context, it can be dropped. If you are not attaching the particle ~보다 to a compared thing, you typically need 더; with ~보다, the 더 is optional.
Is it unreasonable to say "hot tea is cheaper than iced tea?" I understand that "차가운" means cold, but I feel like saying "iced" makes more sense.
In my experience living in Korea, "iced tea" was always referred to using the loanword 아이스티, because it's sort of an imported Western thing, and I only saw it sold in coffee shops. 차가운 차 is simply tea that's served cold.
Even in the United States "Iced Tea" a cold and very sweet tea based drink, while cold tea, cool tea, tea with ice, et cetra all mean tea that is not hot.
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And in the South of the US, "tea" means cold, "sweet tea" means cold tea with a bunch of sugar, and "hot tea" means what everyone else calls "tea"… Dialects are fun.
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I spent over a quarter century of my life in the Deep South and South; this is new to me Murakel.
How do you differentiate between the words salty and cheap ? Isn' t it both 싸요 ??
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- Context.
- If it weren't possible to be ambiguous, then it wouldn't be possible to make puns, and that would make a sad language indeed.
I wrote, Hot tea is cheaper than a cold car. .....Should have known not to write something that made sense.
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Sounds like a tongue-twister. I wonder if native Korean speakers have a hard time saying this 10 times fast.
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The letter omissions are driving me crazy lmao. I always remember them by their standard dictionary form and forget about 받침 rules
